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Q: How many AOLers does it take to screw in a lightbulb?A: One.... and>>>>>>>>me too!!!>>>>>>>me to!!!111!!>>>>>>me too>>>>>me t00!>>>>me too!!!!!!>>>me too!!!!!>>mt!>me to!me too!!!!

The best description I ever heard of unleashing AOLers on the web was something like: "On a highway of most hobbyists and homebuilt cars AOL is the giant bus belching smoke and fumes as the crazed passengers that curse a

That's a known bug in Firefox which seems to have greater effect on people with slower internet connections. It will be fixed in the next version (it's currently "fixed in the trunk"). In the meantime, as others have commented, you can fix it by increasing and decreasing the text size (ctrl + mousewheel or ctrl + +/-).

I do agree that it is ridiculous that Firefox 1.0 was let out the door with this bug. For people on slow or even medium-speed connections, this bug happens a lot, and many have no idea how

In the days before widespread internet usage, a significant percentage of the participants in Usenet were college students. Every September would see an influx of newbies who didn't have a clue about Usenet conventions and would disrupt things until they were educated. When AOL gained Usenet access people referred to it as "the September that never ended", referring to the fact that there was now a constant influx of clueless newbies.

No, it won't. If all the riftraft and other clueless morons leave Usenet then it will become a useful comunications tool for a small but well inteligent group of users again. Small I mean as in 10,000 or 20,000 users. In other words it will return to its roots where people, such as myself, will begin running small and large servers decited to the free exchange of ideals. I think this could be the beginning to a new golden age for Usenet myself.

One of the seasonal rhythms of the Usenet used to be the annual September influx of clueless newbies who, lacking any sense of netiquette, made a general nuisance of themselves. This coincided with people starting college, getting their first internet accounts, and plunging in without bothering to learn what was acceptable. These relatively small drafts of newbies could be assimilated within a few months. But in September 1993, AOL users became able to post to Usenet, nearly overwhelmi

AOL users got their bad name by posting too many ME TOO!, what is a.b.misc, and reply:01/99 - can you repost 2-99.

Giganews and other big name vendors will gladly sell you Usenet service and best yet you can change the port in which you connect with; say port 80 and AOL cant block as they cant figure out if your using HTTP or NTP; they could block the IP address but then again you could use an anonymous proxy and the battle continues. That being said, I hope people know that there are other ISPs that are willing to have you as a customer. If the law suites go after say Giganews then I bet there is some Swiss news account (ok ok when I say Swiss accounts I mean services that wont divulge any information to anyone no matter who's asking).

Giganews and other big name vendors will
gladly sell you Usenet service and best yet
you can change the port in which you connect
with; say port 80 and AOL cant block as they
cant figure out if your using HTTP or NTP

Alternately, you could just RTFA... "The ISP's
pop-up message advises subscribers that newsgroup
services are available from third-party providers."

They don't care if AOL subscribers access
USENet. They just don't want to provide it as a
free service anymore. And, even as an
old-timer (fr

One dismayed user likened AOL members to drunk drivers on the Information Super Highway.

Hm, for the most part, they're still just exactly like that. Nothing's changed in 11 years. Unfortunately, this isn't going to kill AOL, as one other person suggested. Somehow, as badly as AOL sucks, they manage to continue to survive. Maybe it's all those CDs they keep distributing everywhere. Want an AOL CD? Go to Burger King! They make half-decent frisbees...

But I'll take anything that reduces AOL's Internet presence as a good thing for the Internet.

Oh, and the frivolous lawsuit was against AOL, not Usenet. You can't sue Usenet. It's too decentralized.

Let's not knock AOL too much. In all honesty, their simple/stupid model has helped the Internet community grow. Yes this particular brand of Internet users tends to be on the less informed scale, but they spend money - they help the computer industry grow with their wallets.

Who is also the crowd that generally has massive amounts of spyware/trojaned/infected PCs used for sending out Viri and Spam. And also the same who respond to spam, buy spam products and think "Gee, I'm really glad my bank is verifying my account information" when they get a phishing e-mail.

Then there are the things the semi "anonymous" accounts are used for and a few other illegal things that people use AOL accounts for. Eliminating the AOL crowd woul

Thanks for bringing this up. Remember, half of the population has an IQ under 100, by definition.

There are a bunch of self-righteous egotists who hang out here and contend that they just shouldn't have access to technology. That is, of course, bullshit. Including antivirus software with their service is the second best thing AOL has done in a decade (supporting Mozilla being #1).

There needs to be an onramp for the Internet and I don't see anyone else stepping up. Remember - you too were once an annoying helpless newbie!

I don't know any that get OFF the onramp - they just stay within the little AOL world, and have no desire to learn about anything else. They get their email, they have their chat rooms, and the cute little AIM icons.

It's by definition because that is the INTENT of the IQ scale. Much like 100 degrees is one of the defining achor points in Celcius, defined to be the boiling point of water *by definition* (in other words, if it turns out not to be the boiling point of water, then the Celcius scale is wrong and needs adjusting, not the other way around. 100 is the average IQ *by definition*, and if that turns out to be wrong, then the IQ scale needs to be adjusted to match (and it frequently is, which is why someone's I

WebTVers are indeed a form of life below AOL. Fortunately, this means that posting to Usenet at all is beyond the vast majority of them. AOLers are more annoying because they are as dumb as it is possible to be and still be able to post to a newsgroup.

AOL continues to survive because they've had one basic goal when it comes to their client... ease of use out of the box. They want people to be able to take the CD, put it in, install the software, then be able to dial in after answering a couple of questions related to your current area code and location.

Another thing they have is a national presence. They're portable... meaning you can use it at home or when you travel. One friend of mine uses it for exactly that reason. He lives in one area, travels

But I'll take anything that reduces AOL's Internet presence as a good thing for the Internet.

The people I work with/for spend a fortune on hardware, bandwidth, software, and IT services. Basically, they keep geeks in rent and food. But they do that so that they can run their businesses, and a lot of them rely on B2C transactions over the internet. Take away the 20 million or so AOL users that do indeed shop online and spend money, and that's a nasty hit.

Comcast effectively "killed" Usenet access when it told you that you can get it through a third party (which charges after what 2GB?)

They gave a viable alternative by pointing people to Google Groups. At least they didn't shut off free access then start charging their users for it.

AOL has a large userbase of morons. How many of those morons read Usenet anyway? It's likely that it is a tiny group of their overall base. Why support something that no one uses and that you can get through other sources anyway?

Comcast just "outsourced" the news to someone who knows what they're doing - GigaNews. Why should Comcast deal with running news servers and the bandwidth, feeds, and disputes involved in what feeds to distribute, when they can just point their users to a slimmed down GigaNews account?

Sure, if you're downloading a lot of binaries, you're going to hit the wall pretty fast. But if you're just doing text, the Comcast/Giganews partnership gives MUCH faster access, MUCH longer article retention, and a MUCH wide

Actually they restarted the program again (I just started using it again yesterday). They are still using Giganews, and there is still a 2GB monthly limit. 2GB is more than enough for any reading of Usenet, and it's also enough for small downloads (random MP3's and files).

...the final nail in the coffin for me. The only reason I've stuck with them is because I've had an account dating back over a dozen years, and didn't want to give up that e-mail address. Between this, and the 33% price increase I saw when they did away with their 2 yr. plan, I see little reason to stay with them anymore...rat bastards.

The only reason I've stuck with them is because I've had an account dating back over a dozen years, and didn't want to give up that e-mail address.

See. This is why we should demand e-mail address portability. Your e-mail address should follow you, not have to stay tied to one isp. We already have it for phone numbers, so it shouldn't be too hard for e-mail right? I mean, why should you have to give up your "identity" just because your ISP has decided to charge more for less?

Because my email@yahoo.com should be portable to say hotmail but remain email@yahoo.com? It is simply not the same thing as a phone number. The yahoo.com identifies a particular organization - 1) i doubt one company wants to promote/support another company - which you don't get with phone numbers and 2) an e-mail address (afaik) works a bit differently then a phone number. Remember, when you send an e-mail it looks for the location after the @ symbol first. Then your specific account name. So think of

> See. This is why we should demand e-mail address> portability. Your e-mail address should follow> you, not have to stay tied to one isp. We already> have it for phone numbers, so it shouldn't be too> hard for e-mail right? I mean, why should you have> to give up your "identity" just because your ISP> has decided to charge more for less?

Anybody who had the vaguest clue how the Internet, and in particular DNS and SMTP work would not have written the above.

This is done by registering your domain and hosting it, or getting your email through someone who does this for you. Forcing every domain to forward for you in perpetuity would be cumbersom e at best . ..

Good luck canceling you account. They kept me on the phone for about 30 minutes trying to stay with them. The lady was very angry with me because I just kept saying, "No, I just want to cancel." There is no easy way to cancel and AOL account other than by phone, although I guess you can write them a letter and send it snail mail, but that could take months.

Yes and I can remember 1991 when I was able to downloada nearly full feed (including porn..er binaries) from uunetovernite on a Trailblazer modem.

It was clearly unreasonable to expect it to stay a nice smallplace with thousands of new inet users every day. But ofcourse the spam, incessant cross posting, and general blatherwas more than most bargained for. Its somewhat symptomaticof society as a whole. People don't give a fuck what they door who they piss off. In fact, God forbid you point outwhat they have

What about bit-torrent like access to usenet?A torrent for each newsgroup, and sub torrents for the articles.Then I can pull down what I like and not what I dont.And it will come blazingly through my asymetric broadband internet connection.

no. I dont do AOL.I did once use the "free 9000 hours" when I was between jobs back in 96 but that was it. - and it took 6 months to get them to frigin close the account and stop billing me!!

Not trolling here, but...
I remember the old days of dialing into my shell account and using my little news reader ('tin' was it?) to read through my favorite groups. I even remember downloading multiple posts, linking them together, and using some archaic app (binhex, maybe) to turn them into little binary apps like hangman. I was a big fan of USENET back then - good discussions, helpful people, uncensored pr0n...
I tried to visit some groups recently and was sad to see more spam than a hotmail account, one-sentence off-topic posts, etc. Does anyone actually know of any more useful groups?

The "imminent death of the usenet" *did* happen. Most of it is now a post-apocalyptic wasteland.

The grops tha surived pretty much consist of those that were one or more of1) moderated,2) had many regulars complaining about every spam and troll,3) stayed with the traditional method of flaming nonconforming newbies to a crisp, in wpite of the whines of "netcop."

I've been an avid usenet reader for many years. asides from mail lists this has been my primary means of finding technical info. however in the last year it has been inpossible for me to download groups and not get infected. now since I have to use MS at work and the only MS reader that i use is express. it's next to impossible to not get infected. any one know of a good reader example text only that does not get infected ?

I went with my ISP **because** they provide newsgroups. There are lots that don't - and I don't mind paying slightly more for an ISP that sees that porn and warez, I mean Usenet access is a part of what an ISP should provide. Usenet and IRC - the original P2P and IM.

Whats deserved about it? I still find it a useful discussion forum. Just because some groups are full of spam spouting imbeciles doesn't mean they're all useless and just because you obviously don't use it doesn't mean that there arn't hundreds of thousands if not millions of people out there who still do.

But I'm rapidly coming to the conclusion that this is not the case, because most consumers just don't think that way. So by extension the whole self-regulating market thing is immediately dead in the water.

Phew. Good job I'm not from the right wing, or else my entire worldview may have been shattered right there

While it does not provide access to binary groups (for understandable reasons) it works really well for normal text groups. And it's free, all you have to do is registering: news.individual.net [individual.net]

I remember seeing the infamous "green card" spamvertisement on EVERY usenet group.I was slighly in awe that they went through the effort to put it on EVERY freakin' newsgroup.

Now within the last 6 months, I see the same 1 or two spam posts on every single usenet group I'm subbed to. Sad, really.

I would say spam has claimed a victory here. i do find some good usage out of local groups like mn.general(which is generally spam free, but not political cook free), and the grand-theft-auto newsgroup.

But with the playstation2 group, it's 99% cross-posted-to-other-groups flamewars between ps2 and xbox users. *sigh*. Never bothered with the binary groups since I just could not figure out the obfuscated mess that is FreeAgent.

Comcast supposedly moved everyone over to giganews, which is a paid service with either 1 or 2 gigs a month. Wow, 2 gigs of spam per month! Sign me up! Thankfuly their old server still works, but they keep it quiet.

But with the poor s/n ratios of newsgroups, I can see why ISPs are jumping ship.

Can't AOL customers simply use a news client like Outlook Distress (heaven forbid) or Free Agent, and then just subscribe to a newsgroup hosting service? If it's text-based groups that you're interested in, there is News.Individual.NET which is free.

"In headlines today, the dreaded killfile virus spread across the country adding 'aol.com' to people's Usenet kill files everywhere. The programmer of the virus still remains anonymous, but has been nominated several times for a Nobel peace prize."

Truly there is no better definition of sucks than the Usenet service in AOL. Imagine their built-in email client but ten times worse, unloved, frozen in time, built around an ancient Compuserve-style chat forum. That's AOL Usenet.

they still have access to Usenet....just use Google....DUH. Also, they likely dropped it because only people who surf Slashdot even know what Usenet is. Besides, as of late, Usenet is just a place for spam.

Has been predicted before. It's still going. Loosing AOL will hurt... a little. I'm willing to bet any Usenet users on AOL will change ISPs to maintain access to their groups. It will take a long time for usenet to die - especially groups getting 10's of thousands of text posts per day.

This is a Bad Thing. It is simply another indicator of USENET's decline. And that's a Bad Thing, because the alternatives (the web-based forums, many of them excellent--let me plug bikeforums.net as a superb example) are all under corporate, rather than community control. They are simply not committed to the same degree of openness and free-as-in-freedom that USENET is.

It is one more sign that the Wild West days of the Internet are coming to an end and the Internet is coming more and more thoroughly under the control of business interests.

But since nobody owns Usenet--and people post from servers around the world--it's difficult to enforce copyright laws, says Bob Kruger, vice president of enforcement at the Business Software Alliance. The industry group is an outspoken foe of piracy. "It's very difficult to take action against newsgroups," he says.http://tinyurl.com/5uu7t/ [tinyurl.com] PCWorld.comNow this quote is from 2002, and it is still relevant and applicable.

Now that the largest member of both the RIAA and MPAA no longer has a stake in usenet, AOL can participate in a campaign to break it up, or at least to more heavily police it.

A great feature of usenet for copyright violating is that you can leech all you want and noone will ever know except you and your usenet server.

But that won't matter if they convince Congress to place burdensome requirements on companies that maintain usenet servers.

Of course, there are plenty of good Constitutional and practical arguments against doing that. But who is going to make them. More importantly, who is going to have the kind of clout that's necessary to fight a lobbying effort by these people?

I used to access Usenet via netnews.comcast.net. About a week ago I noticed that I could no longer log in via that address. I jumped on Comcast's support site and found that they had outsourced their usenet access to Giganews. I had to change my reader to point to newsgroups.comcast.com, and was now required to use my username and password.

The biggest policy change was that they only allow 2GB of data transfer per month. That sounds like a lot, but to a data addict like me, I can go through that amount of data in a day. Actually, I did, and now have to wait a month before my quota is reset.

Right now I have a couple options if I want to continue to support my usenet addiction. I can subscribe to a monthly service like giganews for $25 a month (in addition to my $40/month Comcast bill), or I can switch to Verizon DSL for cheaper. I'm most likely going to jump on Verizon, but part of me wants to sign up with giganews and use Comcast's network to download ungodly amounts of data, just to say fuck you to them for shutting me off.

I am in a similar situation, here in South Carolina. I have great access through a local Telco, but they outsource to the local conglomorate ISP, out of Charlotte NC. They have almost no binaries on thier News Server. Luckily I maintained my old ISP account, and pay $29 a month. http//www.vnet.net [slashdot.org] and they have damn near all of the binary groups, I can think of, and best of all NO DATA LIMITS I split this access to myself and my father, and split the cost. Compared to Giganews or Supernews, this is as cost

So I guess this means they won't be advertising their service as Unlimited Internet Access? Why is it that ISPs no longer actually provide a connection to the Internet but just a connection to port 80? Sorry this is slightly off topic.

I was going to comment on the same thing. Not only is it only a port 80 connection, but it's DOWNSTREAM ONLY.

I curse you Adelphia, and your stupid rules. If the phone lines in my small town wern't so terrible as to even make 56k not an option, there is no way I'd shell out $57 a month for a nice fast line which is idle 20 hours out of the day.

It sucks out loud that they could be held responsible if I ran some kind of illegal service. If I was selling illegal arms over the telephone could Verizon get in tr

"Internet" access, by its very name, is access to the Internet. You get an IP address (however fleetingly) and can send and receive IP packets to other computers. Email, Usenet, free hosting, and so on are just extra perks. Offering a dedicated Usenet host is not a core part of Internet access.

alt.tasteless was never the same after AOHell infested the group. All the time some dumbass would be jumping in, asking about scrotum self-repair or the exploding whale. "I heard you guys have pics of [starlet #1] and [starlet #2]! Can someone email them to [tard@aol.com]?" followed by a quick "ME TOO!!!!!11" from [tard_number_2@aol.com]. It got to be a contest to see who could flame them back the best; many a snuff story was written with an AOHeller as the star.

I'd put in an ObTasteless here, but I've been out of the loop for so long on account of the spam that I just don't have the heart for it any more. [wipes a wistful tear from his eye]